Her Downfall
by ntlpurpolia
Summary: "She was poised to kill him, knife in hand. It wouldn't have been a murder if no one was looking. New demigods died all the time getting to camp. But then he looked at her with those dark, innocent eyes, and she knew one thing and one thing only: she couldn't kill him."
1. Prologue

**I know it's a little short, but it's a prologue! Next chapter will be longer, promise. R & R please?**

He had ruined all of my plans.

If he hadn't been born, I wouldn't be here, curled up in a ball despising myself.

Nico Di Angelo. I was supposed to kill him, not fall in love with him! Everything had been going well: the you're-a-demigod speech, the getting them part, everything! And then he had to look up from those stupid (but I will admit it, cute) Mythomagic cards.

I looked in those dark, innocent eyes and then I knew only one thing: I. Couldn't. Kill. Him.

He made me cry and laugh and hate myself all the while.

I'd thought it it was a great plan, albeit cliche: get them to trust you before stabbing them in the back. Literally.

I was unable to believe I'd been so stupid, unable to see it coming until it hit me in the face: I'd fallen for the one person I needed to kill.

Who am I, you ask?

Thalia Grace : Daughter of Zeus, Ex-Hunter of Artemis, but most important of all, Nico Di Angelo's girlfriend.


	2. I Must Be A Shadow

**Can't believe all the favorites and follows I have already, thanks you guys. my updating for this story might be a bit here and there because inspiration comes weird so that's why I have like four uncompleted stories all at once.**

* * *

Set during The Titan's Curse

Thank the gods for Grover's clumsiness and fake feet.

Why? It meant I could trip over my own while watching the Di Angelo's and not get people looking at me strangely. Well, mostly Nico, but whatever. There was an aura around them, a deathly thing, really that shrouded them in darkness. I would've thought it intimidating if i hadn't been a tree for seven years. Being in that coma-like state really makes you bored, and... I dare say, suicidal. There was also the way all the shadows in the room seemed almost... drawn to him, like he was a magnet and they were paperclips, a near gravitational pull. _But you must be a shadow, too because you're certainly being attracted to him._ I shook off the annoying thought, and turned my mind to other things. Stupid voice in my head! So he must have been a son of Hades.

_Drat, and there you were hoping to actually get to know him. _Shut up. So, it was just another school dance at a school I didn't go to, dancing with a satyr and arguing with myself over someone I have to kill. Nothing weird about _that_. In my head, I reprimanded myself with an _I'm just curious. After all, it's not every day you meet a son of Hades. Besides, its not like you'll ever have a chance with him. He's too young for you, and you're supposed to kill him anyways! He's your victim, not the other way around. _I deflected the traitorous, daughter-of-Aphrodite-like thoughts and turned my mind to thoughts of ways to make their deaths look like an accident. As I had done so many ways before, I let myself turn off the guilt that might consume me, like I was standing at the edge of a deep precipice, about to jump in voluntarily or turn and start running. A simple push-them-into-whatever-monster-is-chasing-us which worked nearly every time. A bit obvious, but sleight of hand was one of my many talents. I'd seen a cliff behind the school that they might 'accidentally' fall off of.

Now, you must be thinking, why I'm plotting to kill the Di Angelo's. See, when my dad, Zeus turned me into a tree to keep me alive, he also made a deal with me: if I keep you alive/ save you, you have to kill the children of Hades for me. Why? Oh, how I hate stupid prophecies.

* * *

"You could never leave them behind." Zoe Nightshade, that conceited, stuck-up bitch of a girl...So now I was stuck with that Hunter who called me a scullion - what the heck is a scullion?- my idiotic Kelp Head of a cousin, Grover, who played annoying cheesy music on his panpipes, and Annabeth was still missing. Great.

And I can too leave men behind! I left Nico behind, didn't I? _But Nico isn't important to you. Not like Luke was. He's just another kid of the death god you have to kill. Every man you've ever known has used you or betrayed you. Your own father used you to kill his enemy's children, Luke turned to the other side and joined Kronos. So why are you saying that?_

* * *

Bianca was dead. One down, one to go. Even though I knew I shouldn't do it, (Serial killers have to be emotionless and without empathy, otherwise how would they kill innocent sentient people?) I wondered how Nico would handle the news when he found out. Bianca was... had been his only family. Now he had no one. _Just like you will be if this quest fails. _

Would he be in denial, or break down in tears? Would he blame us- blame _me_ for her death? As much as I hated admitting it, and didn't understand _why _was admitting it, I hated, despised the thought of his pain being my fault. What Aphrodite girl, I wondered, had taken over my mind while I was a tree? Shrugging off the burdening thoughts, I trudged further thought the piles of scrap metal.

* * *

The only perk of being a Hunter, I thought, was a reason to hate boys. Or rather, one boy in particular. The arrow hit the target, a picture of a boy I most wanted to see and least longed to see at the same time if that makes sense. How do you kill someone you can not see?

* * *

A muttered "Shit" broke me out of my slumber, and I crept outside the tent to see who it was, wanting to eavesdrop but changing my mind.

"_Tonto*._ Of all the places to end up, it had to be here, in a place where they hate boys and where my sister left me. Stupid shadow-travelling."

I sucked in a breath. Shadow-travelling was a Hades thing, wasn't it? Which meant that the person out there was...

Nico di Angelo.

Now I knew why I had chosen to creep out instead of eavesdropping. I was always a shadow, and he would always draw me to him.


	3. A Late Night Talk About Nothing

**Sorry this is so short!**

**Also, a shout-out to appjhfl12345 for reviewing ALL of my Thalico stories, thanks so much! **

**Thalia's POV**

"I know you're there."

I sucked in a breath, one hand on Aegis.

"Fine. You caught me." I watched Nico, the way he moved : graceful and jittery all at once, like he was always on guard, which I supposed he was. _You are only watching him so you can slay him first chance you get. _I told myself_. C_orrection, _lied_ to myself. But I _did _think of several other rather..._ creative_ things to do to him, most of them involving his body _very _close to mine. _Stop thinking about him like that! You're going to have to murder him sooner or later!_

The moonlight washed the colour out of his already pale skin, making his black hair look even darker, and glinting off his eyes that shone like chips of obsidian in the starlight. He had filled out since I'd last seen him, which was... Three years ago? Time tended to blur together when you did not age.

"Why isn't marmalade called orange jam?"

I blinked, startled and taken aback, certain I had heard wrong. "What?"

"Why isn't marmalade called orange jam? I mean, it's the same thing."

I didn't answer, just laughed, unable to recall the last time I'd laughed. Since I'd been turned into a tree, trading my life for killing children of Hades?

When I didn't reply, he sounded hurt. "You're laughing at me, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Fine, I am."

"You say that a lot."

"Say what a lot?"

"_Fine_." He mocked in a very bad imitation of me.

"Are you going to pick apart everything I do?"

"Maybe."

"I hate that word."

"Maybe?"

"Yes. Just make up your mind. Shrouding yourself in mystery is boring; people are just going to find out your secrets anyways."

"I don't shroud myself in mystery, I shroud myself in shadows."

"Same thing."

"No."

"Well, how is it different?"

"Shrouding yourself in shadows is just hiding. With mystery, you're still there, you're just not completely honest."

"They're both hiding. And cowardly."

"It's what I've been doing my whole life. Besides, it's not like you're all that open either."

Surprising myself, I considered his words. I'd been locking up my secrets my whole life, burying them in my vault of insecurities and guilt. Even with Luke, when I was actually happy for once -or some semblance of it, anyways- I had never told him the whole truth : That I had a brother, that my mother was a drunkard and that I'd left Jason alone with... _her_. How was it that a boy I barely knew, a boy who I was supposed to _kill_ know me better than some people I'd known most my life?

"You're right."

He faked a gasp. "The great Thalia Grace, admitting defeat?"

"Shut up."

Muffled laughter rang through the still night air, cutting through it like a knife through butter, the sound like a clear bell. A shiver ran down my spine as I realized how cold it was, and I was outside in fall at night in only my pajamas, which was only a black tank top and short shorts of the same color. Since only girls were going to be where I slept, it wasn't like anyone was going to see me. Or at least, I'd thought. Nico's gaze travelled across my body, and I felt self-conscious for the first time in my life, goosebumps making a pattern on my bare skin not only at the cold, but at the heavy feeling of having his eyes on me.

I looked up at the sky, which was now streaked with pink, a tell tale sign that dawn was soon to arrive.

"I have to go." the son of Hades looked panicked, almost as if... No. It couldn't be.

"Wait!" The word fell out of my mouth futilely : he had already left in a swirl of shadows, leaving no trace whatsoever that he had actually been there.

Perhaps he never had been.


End file.
